South Korea Finds Another Crashed Drone

An unmanned drone lies on a mountain in Samcheok, South Korea, Sunday, April 6, 2014.

Associated Press

South Korea on Sunday found another suspected North Korean drone, the third of its kind to have been discovered in the past two weeks, adding to concerns over the South’s air defenses.

The drone was recovered from a mountain slope in Samcheok, 290 kilometers (180 miles) east of Seoul and 130 kilometers south of the border with North Korea, following a report Friday by local residents who had come across it in in October, Seoul’s defense ministry said. The ministry didn’t say why the residents hadn’t reported their discovery before.

“The drone, painted in sky-blue and shaped in a triangle, has been confirmed to be the same model of an unmanned aerial vehicle found in Paju recently,” ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told a news briefing.

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The ministry has said that the drone found in Paju, north of Seoul, on March 24, came from North Korea, confirming that it flew near the presidential house in Seoul and took 193 photos of South Korean territory during its secret reconnaissance flight before crashing on its way back to North Korea.

A week after the drone crashed in Paju, a second suspected North Korean drone slammed into the ground on South Korea’s Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea, after both Koreas had exchanged artillery fire into the sea.

Seoul’s defense ministry says the suspected North Korean drones—which all appear to be rudimentary model planes less than six feet long—were made of polycarbonate to evade radar detection.

South Korean investigators said that one of the drone’s batteries was inscribed with a Korean dialect usually used in North Korea.

Seoul’s defense minister, Kim Kwan-jin, told parliament on Friday that North Korean drones could potentially be developed for bombing attacks and the South’s military authorities are preparing to address such threats. Mr. Kim said the North began developing unmanned aerial vehicles in the 1990s. He plans to hold an emergency meeting of military commanding officers on Monday to discuss countermeasures against the North Korean drones, which have flown undetected in South Korea’s airspace.

Local media say Seoul is pushing to purchase advanced radar systems capable of detecting drones or smaller aerial vehicles that fly low. South Korean military officials have declined to confirm the reports.

In March, Seoul confirmed an $817 million plan to buy Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles from Northrop Grumman Corp. to bolster its own capabilities to spy on North Korea.